Year 11 2023-24

[Maxus]

Anyone else got kids starting year 11 in September?

DD still doing some revision. Maybe 30 mins a day? And we still listen to a podcast on the journey to school each day. Next set of mocks are Feb and I think the most recent ones were a wake up call that she needs to prepare more if she wants to achieve target grades.

She's doing Art GCSE which is still taking up many hours every week.

Advice for any student considering art - only do it if it's crucial to your career plans. It's the subject that's taken the most of her time this year and last, but the one which has the lowest target grade. And she only did it because she didn't know which subjects to pick so went for ones she enjoyed the most. A mistake in hindsight.

DS doesn't have mocks until January, but if anything, I'm planning him doing more, not less after his mocks.
We need a minimum of 4 5's for 6th Form and a 6 in the subjects they want to do.
He is planning to stay at school and the open evening is in 2 weeks so we will know more then.

Thanks @Gazelda for the heads up my DD starts next year and had considered art now off the list.
@gingercat02 I had hoped it would work as a wake up call and DS would revise more before next mocks maybe when he gets his results he will do!

Bit late, but keen to join please!

I have identical twin girls.

One is quite academic, revising all the time and wants to do 4 A levels at a private 6th form college. Needs 6x6's. Needs to work hard but should be ok.

The other one wants to do a BTEC in Health & Social at the local college. Needs 5X 4's. Done no revision at all. Finds it all overwhelming and has had lots of days off, self harming 😞 and spending lots of time in 'The Link'

Mocks start on Monday.

I'm stressed about one and relaxed about the other one!

So glad to read that they may get the equations etc for physics and maths. They both hate STEM subjects so this should really help.

Agree with the comments about art, it is very time consuming. DD2 loves it so sees that as her relaxing time and constantly has a paintbrush or pencil in her hands, to her it isn't work.
She has a second week of mocks next week but has been far calmer than her older sister was about it all. We paid for CBT counselling for DD1 she was so stressed. DD2 is more academic than DD1 and I'm hoping she'll remain calm. She wasn't happy with her maths exam but her maths tutor will go through it when she gets the paper back and I'm not worried about the grade. She is though, she wants to get a grade higher than school have predicted to prove her teacher wrong. 😀Solidarity to all going through this with their DC.

Feeling sorry for my daughter her currant schedule has an extra hour of a different subject every week day after school so she's not finishing until 4.15pm Mon and Tues, 5pm Weds and Thurs and 2.55pm Friday (early finish for whole school) plus Saturday
tuition in different subject every week 10am-3pm. It seems so full on. This is a state school.
Is anyone's else's school like this?

@CactusPeach is that not a good thing? My dc go to private schools and they finish lessons at 4.30 every day.

Our state school has revision sessions at 8am 3 days a week. English, Maths and Science.
There is a MFL drop in until 4:30 on Wednesday.
They finish at 3:15, 2:15 on a Tuesday.

@mylittleprince It's good in terms of the amount of guided revision / tuition and I think the more she can do there with them the better as it's a lot easier than revising on your own, it's just intense.

Wow @CactusPeach thats impressive that they are helping with with that much study. Non on at DS school at mo wondering if they are waiting for the results 2wks Friday!

School on a Saturday 10-3???

Mocks today and T2 wrote for 20 mins then fell asleep 🙄🙄

Really worried about the real things tbh!

Does anyone have insight into maths tiers. DS wants to move to foundation level to secure a 5 more easily. He’s really struggling on the higher. His teacher keeps saying that if you are aiming for a 5 you’ll get that on either paper but his tutor disagrees. 🙈

The perceived wisdom is that it is easier to guarantee the pass on the Foundation.

Higher jumps straight into grade 3 problems which can still be tricky, so a less confident student can get put off straight away and end up not doing even the questions they can do and thus failing.
On the other hand if your DS has some grade 6+ topics they are confident on, then they won't be there on the Foundation paper.

Foundation starts with much easier questions which give a good run in to the harder ones. However if accuracy or stamina is an issue then this could be problematic as they have to get much higher marks to pass, and the grade 4/5 questions don't appear until the end of the paper when they may be more tired.

Also if teaching has been aimed towards Higher then they may have 'forgotten' some easier topics so they will need to be checked. However there are a whole bunch of topics you can throw away and not bother to revise at all if dropping to Foundation.

If I tag @noblegiraffe she may give some more insight.

Yes! This is my worry. He’s been doing higher for ages and been in this set for years. I worry about him forgetting the basics and his brilliant at algebra. His tutor finds his profile bizarre: harder questions (6 ish) are easier than maths basics but he’s still struggling to get a solid 4 now in the higher

but he’s still struggling to get a solid 4 now in the higher

I think this is normally be a signal for dropping to Foundation.
I wish there was an intermediate tier.

My DS was moved from higher to foundation at the start of the year. I was a bit concerned as you do just need about 25% to get a 4/5 on the higher and about 60% on the foundation. He is much more confident on the foundation ( part of this is his teacher though and part of its because its a smaller class who all think hes some kind of maths genius after years of struggling at the bottom of the higher class!) But he did find himself overthinking the foundation paper in the most recent mocks as he'd been doing the higher for 2 years and spending ages on 1 mark questions ' because it seemed too easy' ( they start content in year 9) and had forgotten the easier stuff/didn't use his calculator in the calculator paper etc. There was some easy stuff they hadn't done either, which makes sense if they start on grade 3. He doesn't want to go back to his old class even if he does well in the mocks though, so hopefully, it will be easy enough with practice to get his technique sorted out. I would say if your ds was going to move the earlier the better as they need to do the lower stuff to get to the higher grade 4/5 stuff. Other than that I just don't know how it will pan out. Last maths paper today.

There used to be. I was put into higher tier maths 35 years ago, got a D and then resat the intermediate and got a C.

@pearldiamond Does your DT2 qualify for access arrangements such as extra time, or breaks? If it’s not been looked into before now, I wonder whether breaks might help her. There’s still time to get these adjustments before the exams and they can make a huge difference. Worth looking into, at least?

Yes, she has rest breaks and is in a separate room.

Today she was meant to have Business studies and english lit mock but has not gone in at all.

She says she finds it too stressful sitting in the room whilst everyone around her is typing away (she is the only one not on a computer) yet she has finished in 20 minutes because she can't to it because she hasn't revised.

She has got processing difficulties and finds it hard to focus for too long and says her brain feels like it's going to explode.

I have said to her not to stress too much about these mocks but she really does need to come up with a plan of how she is going to manage the real things. She already only does 8 subjects (because I anticipated this kind of thing and we managed to persuade the school) and 3 of those are heavy coursework (for which she is getting distinction/distinction *)

It's quite stressful tbh! Especially when T1 is revising hard and doing really well!

Panic71 - T1 also wants to move down to foundation from higher maths. We will see what she gets in her mock and go from there i think. She is not a maths/science person but does really well in essay based subjects so wants to be able to focus on them rather than the STEM stuff. I hope the school let her!

@pearldiamond With T2 are you in a position to help her revise? With DD1 I did most of her revision 1-1 with her, it made a tremendous difference as to what she could learn in any time slot. On her own her eyes glazed over / her mind wandered / she convinced herself she knew things. With me we would look at the revision guide, I'd ask questions and prompt, and we would keep going back until she could say the answers. It was very time consuming for me, but I was a SAHM so could do it.

TeenDivided - I would love to do this but she is quite reluctant. However, if she carries on the way she is, I think I will have to insist. She sounds very much like your DD1 - the eyes glazing over sounds v familiar! I'm in a position to do this as I only work weekends.

She has one proper GCSE in January (Child Development) and i am getting her to focus on that one for now as she has the potential to do well in this and then there is one over with leaving just 7 for the summer.

pearl What does she need for next steps? Is she on target to achieve?

I was lucky, DD1 at GCSE level was very motivated to do the best she could. She was also helped by being pre-GCSE-reform so had controlled assessments to fall back on for some subjects.
DD2 however has always been much more reluctant to have me help...

She wants to do a BTEC in Health and Social care which needs 5 GCSE's at grade 4 and above (including maths and english). This is 100% coursework which will suit her MUCH better! Thank goodness they are not being phased out in 2024!

I've just had a chat with her and she is going to write down how she is going to revise for each subject eg flash cards or videos. Half the battle with her is that she doesn't know how to revise. I offered my one to one services but she declined. Said she would prefer to do it herself and for me to test her. Fair enough.

I've also told her she needs to at least sit the rest of the mocks this week (knowing she probably won't do too well seeing as she's not revised) otherwise she will be taken out of lessons to do them in the coming weeks and she's already missed loads.